Physical Description

An anomalous, small planet pulled into a stable orbit around a suitable sun, Hazmeat is a mostly-featureless warning-sign-yellow orb. Reddish porthole-like dots are placed equidistantly across its surface, though they have been observed moving toward objects placed on the surface at a rate of several meters a day. It possesses a breathable atmosphere exactly ten meters thick.

History

Hazmeat was earmarked on discovery as an obvious anomaly, forgotten about after initial materials testing of its rubbery "skin" showed superb resilience, including extreme heat and cold resistance, but no clear way to harvest it.

Hazmeat's true value was only discovered after an incident with a smuggler and a hastily-dumped collection of museum-quality skeletons. The resulting first generation of "hazmeat suits", instead of fighting the Q-classes sent to eliminate them, joined rank followed orders and proved invaluable in the squad's next clockwork-cleansing mission.

The planet's location has since been expunged from most public records, to avoid misuse of the anti-clockwork anomaly.

Locations

N/A: Other than lumps or hills formed by recent frames absorbed by Hazmeat's skin, the planet is featureless.

Special

Hazmeat suits: Hazmeat's rubbery "skin" will grow over any solid materials left on its surface, creating a lump or hillock on the planet's surface. This will recede over the course of about a month, leaving a fleshed-out, yellow-suited outline studded with 1-4 of the planet's "eyespots" in parts of the "body" where eyes might be expected. The resulting form will eventually detach cleanly from the surface and become ambulatory.

Hazmeat suits can take on almost any form, but hard materials laid out in a displeasing configuration, such as a single solid object, will simply be absorbed into the planet. The preference seems to be for a torso and any number of limbs, with their size only limited by the durability of the "bones" used for supporting structures such as legs and the weight they carry.

The suits are extremely durable, follow orders of those clearly marked as leaders of anti-clockwork task forces, and are capable of unerringly executing group tasks related to clockwork containment. They appear to talk to each other in a staticky, indecipherable language that sounds like they're talking over radios.

Trivia

• Hazmeat's eagerness to assist with clockwork eradication, as well as the intelligence demonstrated by its suits, implies it was formerly an individual associated with clockwork quarantine before being blessed by a Limbo god. Anti-religious worshippers of the Creator and Poetnix often argue that their god was the one responsible for Hazmeat's creation.

• The location of Hazmeat is of particular interest to guerrilla artists, who like to see what kind of suits can form depending on the original skeleton. Their efforts have resulted in freakish, besuited forms crawling across Hazmeat. While these suits do not seem to be dangerous, to avoid accumulating nuisances Hazmeat is periodically towed to different star systems.

• Hazmeat suits are utterly non-aggressive toward non-clockworks, but seem to remember when one of their kind have been harmed by a person. How they communicate this information back to Hazmeat is unknown. Due to the durability experiments conducted by a certain K-class, it is known that:

- Hazmeat suits extrude a "sausage-like meat" when their skin is successfully broken, and

- Suits no longer cooperate with most heredoggo, slarym, and notails with X's for eyes on their mask.